Neanderthals and Modern Humans
An Ecological and Evolutionary Perspective

This book provides evidence that climate change drove Neanderthal extinction, not competition with our own ancestors.

Clive Finlayson (Author)

9780521121002, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 17 September 2009

268 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.4 kg

'The book is well laid out and the argument develops logically over the eight chapters … this is a very erudite and worthwhile book that lays out a plausible set of testable conclusions.' Journal of Cambridge Archaeological Journal

Neanderthals and Modern Humans develops the theme of the close relationship between climate change, ecological change and biogeographical patterns in humans during the Pleistocene. In particular, it challenges the view that Modern Human 'superiority' caused the extinction of the Neanderthals between 40 and 30 thousand years ago. Clive Finlayson shows that to understand human evolution, the spread of humankind across the world and the extinction of archaic populations, we must move away from a purely theoretical evolutionary ecology base and realise the importance of wider biogeographic patterns including the role of tropical and temperate refugia. His proposal is that Neanderthals became extinct because their world changed faster than they could cope with, and that their relationship with the arriving Modern Humans, where they met, was subtle.

Preface and acknowledgements
1. Human evolution in the Pleistocene
2. Biogeographical patterns
3. Human range expansions, contractions and extinctions
4. The modern human-Neanderthal problem
5. Comparative behaviour and ecology of Neanderthals and modern humans
6. The conditions in Africa and Eurasia during the last Glacial Cycle
7. The modern human colonization and the Neanderthal extinction
8. The survival of the weakest
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Human biology [PSX]